


The Best of Them

by monimala



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 08, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 08:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18687811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: Set during and shortly after the first three episodes of season eight.His pulse actually quickens at the sight of her, not because of her beauty—though it is, of course, considerable—but because he’s hungry for the next lash of her tongue, the next cutting insight…the next reminder of things he’s forgotten in between Meereen and Westeros.





	The Best of Them

His once-wife’s dismissal of his cleverness stings. He carries the disquiet with him for hours, like the chafe of sand in his breeches or a tick burrowed beneath his skin. That Sansa Stark is no longer the girl he remembers is not a shocking development. That _he_ is not the man _she_ remembers…oh, how that upsets his entire worldview. Tyrion Lannister, the smartest man in any room. The man who used books as whetstones. Has he truly lost his sharpness? It sends him into a spiral of brooding, moralizing, and conferring with the likes of Varys and Ser Davos. The three of them like a set of squabbling chickens, clucking over their prize chicks. Each of them with their own loyalties, their own agendas. He’d thought he’d retained his own mind. Now…now, he’s not at all certain.          

It’s some time before he encounters his former bride alone again, caught up as they each are in their various duties as the Lady of Winterfell and the Hand of the Queen. She’s no happier to see him when they pass by one another in the hall. He’d be both a liar and a fool if he claimed equal displeasure. His pulse actually quickens at the sight of her, not because of her beauty—though it is, of course, considerable—but because he’s hungry for the next lash of her tongue, the next cutting insight…the next reminder of things he’s forgotten in between Meereen and Westeros, the aspects of himself that have drowned in the narrow seas, or choked to death in service to Daenerys Targaryen.

“How are you finding Winterfell, my lord? Everything meets with your approval, I hope?” Nights on the Wall were warmer than Sansa’s tone, which coats courtesy in ice and lets him know that his approval does not actually matter to her one bit.

He nods deferentially, acknowledging all that she has done to keep Winterfell clothed and fed and bathed. Acknowledging his own weaknesses as well. “I find a great many things here appeal to me, my lady. The perspective, for instance. I fear I was away from Westeros too long. Distance and time can change a man’s vision.”       

His veiled apology for his faith in Cersei seems to thaw Sansa inch by inch. Frost only tips her lashes and the corners of her lips when she replies. “For the worse or for the better?”

“That remains to be seen.” He laughs with more irony than mirth. 

***

For decades, his most profound wish has been to die an old man, in bed, with a belly full of wine and a woman’s mouth on his cock. He’s nearly died a dozen times in far less peaceful ways. That he comes closest to it in a crypt with the whisper of Sansa’s glove against his lips is unexpected. And not entirely unwelcome. There is a perfect moment of silence between them, as the shrieks of the undying and the panicked cries of their people fade into nothingness, where he feels the weight of her fingers and the weight of his blade in equal measure and thinks, “This is it. This is how we meet our end.” It is not so bad, he tells himself, to die in her eyes instead of her arms.   

But they rally. They fight. They live. The two prized more for their intellect than their strength. They kill wights and save children and emerge from the darkness covered in ashes. A stay of execution. One more second chance. A chance he’s not certain he deserves.    

_"We should’ve stayed married_ ,” he’d told her. _“You were the best of them,”_ she’d said. It’s not so much a compliment as a comment on the terrible things men do. Tyrion has no illusions that he’s worthy of the Lady of Winterfell, of his former bride. There is blood on his hands, too. But he thinks long and hard on their words in the Stark family crypt as they throw themselves into the task of setting Winterfell to rights after the Long Night. There are bodies to burn, survivors to comfort, supplies to tally. All of it needs managing. There is hardly a spare moment to celebrate victory, to reaffirm life. But he finds moments enough to look for her. To meet her gaze across the castle keep. She’d accused him of divided loyalties. So utterly sure that he would put queen before wife. How strange, then, that Tyrion suddenly sees both queen and wife as two halves of a whole.

There is only one woman he would bend the knee to now.             

 ***

She sends for him when things have momentarily gone quiet. Quiet save for the raucousness of those drowning in drink or fucking or fighting, that is. It's as if, given a reprieve and a few hours' rest, all of Winterfell is clinging to vice with both hands. As a Hand himself, he understands the inclination and would never presume to judge. Especially when he arrives at Sansa's chamber to find her in naught but a night rail, her hair loose across her shoulders as she brushes it out before the fire. He can't remember the last time he had a woman. He's never had _this_ woman. Never consummated their union. The desire to do so is sudden, intense, overwhelming. He nearly trembles with it as his gaze tracks the rhythmic motion of her comb, the red of her hair and the red of the flames, the shadow of her body beneath simple white linen. 

"My lady. Sansa. You wanted to see me." Where the words come from, he doesn't know. Choked as they are, the journey clearly took some effort. 

"Will you always do what I want, Tyrion?" He would think it flirtation, but he knows better. He sees the true question in the storm clouds of her eyes. _Will you answer to me above her, above the Targaryen queen?_

"Within reason," he tells her, because she deserves the honesty. That and so much more. 

"Reason is in short supply here. As is every other necessary commodity." Weariness weighs her voice as she sets her comb beside her on the small bench by the even smaller hearth. "I questioned your loyalties. I had no right to do so when my own could never belong only to you. I am the North's woman first, my lord. First, last, and always. Everything I do, I do for the North." 

He knows this. She is, after all, the Lady of Winterfell. Northern blood runs in her veins, forms every beat of her not-quite-hardened heart.

"Then why am I here?" he asks as he crosses the bedchamber, closing the distance between them. “We needed never speak again of my foolish fancies in the crypt. I may have lacked in some faculties that night, my lady, but I assure you, I am well versed in nuance. I would’ve understood your silence perfectly. Why did you summon me tonight?”   

He sees the true answer in the storm clouds of her eyes before she even speaks it. Before she reaches out her hand to him. "Because I want just one thing, one night, for _me_." 

When he kisses her fingers this time, he tastes skin instead of leather. Warm and smooth and salt. She presses her palm to his beard, strokes his cheek, her fingertips glancing over the scars. Strange that she should touch him so tenderly when she is the one who should be handled with care. “Sansa, are you certain?” he murmurs even as she draws him between her thighs.

There is blood and steel in her reply. “That you even think to ask _makes_ me certain.”

Rage blooms in his chest then, for her meaning is more than clear. Men have not done Sansa Stark any kindnesses. That she should want this at all, and from him, is a miraculous, sacred, thing. So, he tempers and tables his anger. He embraces once more that terrifying, trembling, desire for her. He asks to kiss her mouth. He asks to take great handfuls of her hair. He asks to hold her and fuck her and please her. He asks again and again and again. And each and every time, Sansa tells him “yes.” With her words, with her body, with her trust, with how she comes apart beneath him.

Tyrion Lannister, the smartest man in any room…the luckiest man in this one.

    

 

\--end--


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